A229382 David S. Cohen's near-miss counterexample to Fermat's Last Theorem for exponent 12.

3987, 4365, 4472

Offset: 1

Author

Joe Sondow and Jonathan Sondow, Sep 23 2013

Keywords

• nonn
• fini
• full

Comments

The left side of the Fermat "equation" 3987^12 + 4365^12 = 4472^12 is 0.000000002% larger than the right side. However, the ones digit on both sides is the same, namely, 6.

Homer Simpson gave this "counterexample" to FLT in an episode of The Simpsons written by David S. Cohen.

References

• S. Singh, The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets, Bloomsbury USA, 2013.

Links

• C. Goff, Animating Popular Mathematics: "The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets", AMS Notices, 62 (2015), 40-44.
• Simon Singh, The Simpsons' secret formula: it's written by maths geeks, The Guardian, 21 September 2013.

Crossrefs

Cf. A019590, A229383.

Formula

a(n)^4 = A229383(n).